I am curious why you feel so strongly that the Hebrew points should be ignored
in domain names. Prima facie, it seems that there is little harm in treating
them no differently from other characters. What problem would arise if the
domain was ABC.COM and I could not get it by typing AB*C.COM? (Here uppercase
stands for Hebrew, and * for a point.) Conversely, if someone really did
register AB*C.COM, would it be a problem that I couldn't get to that location by
typing ABC.COM?

It is my understanding that the vowels are rarely used, and that people really
wouldn't use them in registered domain names anyway. It seems that if someone
did take the trouble to type in the points, that there would be a reason for
their making such a distinction.

I'd appreciate it if you could help me to understand the issue more clearly.

Mark

Jonathan Rosenne wrote:

> We should distinguish "punctuation", like 060C Arabic Comma, and
> "diacritics", such as 064E Arabic Fatha. Diacritics is probably the wrong
> word. I have the impression that you were referring to the latter.
>
> For Hebrew, my opinion is that from the point of view of the user,
> punctuation should be forbidden, while diacritics such as the vowels and
> other combining characters should be allowed and be ignored.
>
> I believe it is important that the rules for Arabic and Hebrew should be the
> same as far as possible.
>
> Jony
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-idn@ops.ietf.org [mailto:owner-idn@ops.ietf.org]On
> > Behalf Of Wael Nasr
> > Sent: Saturday, September 16, 2000 1:16 AM
> > To: Edmon; idn working group; Adam M. Costello
> > Subject: RE: [idn] nameprep forbidden characters
> >
> >
> > Wanted to share with you that in the arabic Working group of minc we have
> > discussed this
> > point at length.
> > In arabic the meaning of the word will change depending on punctuation ,
> > like the
> > words "knowlege" and "flag" in arabic are exactly the same except for
> > punctuation.
> >
> > It is my opinion that , at least regarding arabic, no punctuation
> > should be
> > allowed for now.
> >
> > I am sure 5 years from now , domain name systems will be much more dynamic
> > than what
> > we have now and will not be simply a simple mapping of unicode or ascii to
> > an ip number.
> > at that time, punctuation can be allowed to be part of the game.
> > wael
> >
> > -------------------------------------------
> > Wael Nasr
> > Director, Middle East Business Development
> > I-DNS.net
> > wael.nasr@i-dns.net> > Cell Phone(Egypt):+(201) 222 55 380
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-idn@ops.ietf.org [mailto:owner-idn@ops.ietf.org]On Behalf Of
> > Edmon
> > Sent: Saturday, September 16, 2000 12:59 AM
> > To: idn working group; Adam M. Costello
> > Subject: Re: [idn] nameprep forbidden characters
> >
> >
> > Perhaps host names
> > > should avoid all punctuation in all languages so people don't have to
> > > worry about it.
> >
> > I think we have to remember that it is the registrant's choice to choose a
> > name that best reflects their identity online. Punctuations may
> > serve to be
> > great symbols that identifies an entity, for example a person
> > called O'Brian
> > would want to have the apostrophe for his domain name and a company A&B
> > would want the "&" in their name. Our move to multilingual is the best
> > opportunity for us to re-include these worthwhile and long awaited symbols
> > back into the domain name space.
> >
> > Edmon
> >
> > >
> > > AMC
> >
> >
> >